Lighted Windows, page 8
For a split second Janice hesitated as imagination projected a picture of herself being torn to ribbons. The kidnapper had vanished. Then she fumbled frantically at the gate. They would kill Blot. Where was the trick latch? She had it. She dashed into the midst of the excited tormentors, caught the black cat in the air, held it high as the dogs sprang for her. Gleeful yelps deepened to menacing growls. She backed toward the gate. Two or three huskies, she couldn’t tell how many, sneaked behind her. Her heart pounded in her throat. She didn’t know much about dog psychology, but she knew enough not to run.
Claws ripped at her dahlia jacket, at her satin trousers. She lost a parchment sandal. The slim gray Siberian carried it off, worrying it as he went. She backed cautiously, saying over and over, soothingly:
“Nice boys! Down! Down!’
Her lips were too stiff to voice command. The husky with the baleful glare stalked toward her in a sullen wolf-walk, lips lifting in spasmodic snarls. Suddenly he reared. His gold-flecked eyes were on a level with hers, his wrinkled nose bared yellowed fangs. Sneering at her, was he? Would she ever get outside that fence? Miss Martha would say, “There’s a gate in every wall, my dear.” There was in this one if she could only make it The wolf-dog was leaping—
“Drop the cat! Good God! Drop the cat! At him, Tong!”
Janice was conscious of a tawny shape flashing by her, of the impact of bodies, of a yelp of pain, before an arm was flung about her shoulders. She looked up into eyes blazing in a face, livid, lined. Bruce! Of course. Hadn’t he appeared at the exact psychical moment to pick up her black slipper? She still clutched the cat as he drew her outside the gate.
She looked over her shoulder. Tong, his brush hanging straight, fangs bared, beautiful head lowered, glared at the dogs cringing away from him. She controlled a shiver.
“Come on.”
She looked up at Bruce Harcourt whose fingers bit into her arm.
“I’m going as fast as I can with one sandal. This ground isn’t a trotting-park”
She glanced down at her silk-stockinged foot, regarded incredulously her shredded pajamas. She laughed, sobbed, laughed again.
“Stop it! You’ll have hysterics in a moment.”
Her voice caught treacherously in the midst of indignant denial. Without warning, Harcourt picked her up in his arms She tried to free herself.
“Stop wriggling. You’re heavy enough as it is.”
“I can walk. It’s absurd to carry me.”
His look burned her voice to a thread. She thought: “My word, but he’s furious! Will this escapade mean the next boat out for Tubby’s secretary?”
Breathing hard, he set her on her feet in the living room of the Samp cabin. He closed the door and backed up against it. His face was darkly red as he demanded:
“Don’t you know better than to run round this camp dressed in those things? I saw you from the office window. Couldn’t believe my eyes. Look at yourself.”
Still clutching the black cat who was stirring in her arms, Janice looked. The dahlia sleeves were ripped from shoulders to wrists. Through slashes in the orchid satin of the trousers, her flesh showed ivory smooth. Lucky that the dogs hadn’t dug into her skin with their claws. Of course Bruce hadn’t thought of that, he was too concerned with her costume. She blinked furiously to keep back nervous tears. She knew from experience that fright did things to a man’s temper, but this was the limit. Wasn’t it sufficiently maddening to have one’s clothes ruined without being bawled out for it? Her eyes flashed to his.
“What’s the matter with the sartorial effect? There’s a classic simplicity about it which intrigues me. If I had on a bathing suit you wouldn’t be shocked to see my skin. Think I was running out to the kennels for exercise? Someone came into this room and kidnapped Blot. I heard the scuffle. Doubtless you would have stopped to change your tie and brush your hair. My one thought was to rescue the Samp girls’ pet. Those dogs nearly ate me up and you stand there glowering at me because I’m not properly dressed! Now you’ll threaten to send me out on the next boat. It’s the best thing you do. Well, I won’t go. I’ll stay—”
With a furious lunge for freedom Blot flung up a spiked paw, clawed her cheek from brow to chin. With a cry of pain Janice dropped him.
“Demon! You ungrateful—”
Harcourt flung an arm about her half-bare shoulders. “Jan! Jan, dear! That infernal cat!” His voice broke. He pulled forward a chair. “Sit here. Don’t touch it, dear, don’t touch it. I’ll bring something to ease the pain.’
His voice was shaken, his face taut, colorless. He was no longer furious, that was something to the good, the girl told herself. She gently touched her cheek. Bleeding, of course. Smarting unbearably. From under the couch Blot peered at her with inscrutable emerald eyes. It eased the ache to pick up a spool, a large spool. and fling it at him.
“The next time you’re kidnapped, little one, you’ll meow your black head off before you’ll get help from me.” Harcourt entered with a bowl in one hand, scissors and gauze in the other. “Don’t bother with me, Bruce. I was so stunned by Blot’s ingratitude that my mind stopped clicking. I’ll take care of the scratch myself.”
“Sit still.” He drew up a chair, set the bowl on it, dipped a piece of gauze in the liquid it contained, bent over her. “This will make it smart like the dickens at first.”
“Like the dickens” was expressing it mildly. Janice shut her eyes tight to keep back tears as he gently swabbed her cheek. His touch was gentle, steady. She might have known it would be. Even as a child she had loved the feel of his strong, finely kept hands.
“Hurting unbearably, Jan?”
She opened her eyes, managed a twisted smile. “Can’t say that I would choose it for an indoor sport. My face is getting stiffer and stiffer. Will the scratch leave a scar? I hadn’t thought of that before.”
“Not if you take care of it. Miss Martha will tell you what to do. That’s all. I won’t touch it again.”
He seemed extraordinarily tall and stem in his old shirt, corduroy breeches and polished puttees as he loomed over her. If only he would be friendly, stay and talk it over, she thought wistfully. Whenever they were together, which was seldom, she sensed that he was straining at the leash, eager to escape. In an effort to hold him now—for which strategy she despised herself—she confided:
“I’m sure that Kadyama was the kidnapper.” She put her hand to her cheek and winced. “Perhaps Blot has clawed him.”
“I doubt it. The natives regard the black cat with malevolent superstition. Kadyama may have been acting for them. Forgive me for lashing at you about your clothes, Jan. They were an excuse to blow off steam. Looking out of the office window I saw you in the kennel yard. I thought I’d never get to you.” He cleared his voice. His turbulent eyes met hers. “You were wrong. I’ll not threaten again to send you home. I’ll try another plan. Take care of that scratch. See you later.”
He closed the door behind him. She listened to the diminishing sound of his footsteps. What had he meant? It didn’t sound too good.
“I’ll try another plan.” The words ran like an undertone through her mind as, after the Waffle Shop closed, she sat at the secretary in the Samp living-room making out orders from a catalogue. A pile of sealed, addressed envelopes attested to work accomplished for the engineers.
What could Bruce have meant? Nibbling the ornamental end of her fountain pen, she examined her reflection in the mirror. Two red, angry scratches streaked her cheek from brow to chin. They showed up in startling contrast to the delicate blue of her frock. She was a sight, and the black cat snoozed as peacefully in the firelight as though he never had done anything more harmful than lick cream from a saucer. Her anger cooled as she looked at Miss Martha in the wing chair beside the table with the open Bible. Her gnarled, big-knuckled hands gripped a newspaper. She seemed tired. She was absorbed in a murder case, of course.
Crime accounts were meat and drink to her. Her white-stockinged feet were stretched at ease, her heavy shoes were beside her chair. Rosy, benign, Miss Mary was absorbed in a copy of Vogue. She looked up to ask in a thrilled voice:
“Janice, did you notice this dress the Princess—I can’t pronounce her name—is wearing?”
Janice blinked a mist from her eyes. Dear little Miss Mary, starved for what gaunt Miss Martha called the “pretties” of life. She said gaily:
“Gorgeous and then some, isn’t it? You and I simply eat up the fashion magazines, don’t we, Miss Mary? We’ve just got to know how many inches below our knees to wear our frocks and whether the languorous lady is in, or the sporty female.”
“And just how to fling our sable coat over the back of our chair when lunching at Pierre’s,” the younger Miss Samp added with unwonted humor.
“Sakes alive, Janice and her fashion magazines have started a clothes epidemic in this camp. Caught Mary sending for a free week-end sample of tissue cream and face powder. Tatima spends every spare minute with her nose in a mail-order catalogue. Even that Indian Ossa, who carves silver, begged for the jewelry advertisement pages. Wanted ideas for next summer’s trade, he said.” With a sniff of disdain Miss Martha returned to her paper.
Chair tipped back against the chinked walls, Tubby Grant strummed a ukulele, crooned softly to its accompaniment. Black-haired, tired-eyed Jimmy Chester, lounging on the couch, pulled at his short mustache, with a hand which looked surprisingly white in contrast to the dark seal ring on the little finger. The musician stopped playing to inquire:
“What’s the matter, Lady? Struck a snag? We’ve got to send these orders out in the plane tomorrow or the goods won’t come on the last boat in October. Got any hors d’oeuvres?”
Janice turned the pages. “Gelatine—Ginger—”
Jimmy Chester sat up. “Hi! Stop there. Put ginger on my list. Choy Fong. You know the kind comes in painted jars. Mother—” he coughed to camouflage the traitorous break in his voice—“Mother used to have pots of it to put in ice-cream, and Milly and I snitched it whenever we found it not under lock and key.”
What sports these men were! Home must seem heart-breakingly far away as the days shortened and the long, dark winter stole relentlessly forward, Janice thought. Now that Bruce had said that he wouldn’t send her out, she would make Christmas the happiest that this outfit ever had spent in Alaska. Already she had written to New York for all sorts of holiday trimmings. She turned another page.
“Here you are, Tubby. ‘Hors d’oeuvres. Varied combinations, besides lending a cheerful aspect to the table, beguile the guests’ attention from the moment of entering the dining-room.’ I call that literature. What will you have? Antipasto, seven-ounce jars, $1.10.”
“Order a dozen.”
“You don’t care what you do, do you? Expecting to entertain royalty?”
“Mebbe so, mebbe so. Mebbe I’ll eat every scrap myself. If you’re good I may give you a taste, but you’ll have to watch your step. You’ll serve it for me, won’t you, Miss Martha?”
Martha Samp peered at him over the tops of her spectacles. “I don’t know what new-fangled dish you’re talking about, but if it’s baked, fried or boiled, I can do it.”
An authoritative knock was followed by the opening of the door. Bruce Harcourt entered. “What’s the matter? You look as though you had seen a ghost.”
Miss Martha rose stiffly, pattered forward in her stockinged feet. Her voice was warm with affection.
“It just does my old eyes good to see you here, Mr. Bruce. You haven’t dropped in for the evening for weeks an’ weeks; now I come to think of it, since Janice came. Mary, bring out the bowl an’ cracker with the nuts we’ve been savin’ for him.”
Mary Samp fluttered forward to take his cap. Miss Martha patted a chair invitingly.
“Sit here, Mr. Bruce. My, I’m all flustered havin’ you back again.”
Tubby Grant drew his hand across the strings of his uke. Struck into “Hail to the Chief.” Reminded crisply:
“When you get through staring at the Samp sisters’ white-haired boy, Miss Trent, I’ll complete my order.”
“Come over here and make out your check, then I’m through.”
Janice turned her back on Harcourt and bent over her papers. Why had he appeared tonight for the first time, as Miss Martha had reminded him, since she had come? Anything to do with that “plan” of which he had spoken? Tubby Grant, his order completed, straddled a chair beside his chief. Jimmy Chester took his place at the desk. With Bruce’s warning prickling in her mind, she welcomed him with gay enthusiasm. Above his low, confidential voice, she could hear the tap of a hammer, the crack of nutshells, the give and take of badinage. In the mirror she could see Miss Mary beaming on the two men; from time to time Miss Martha looked around her newspaper at them.
“Give these to the lady who turned her back on us, Tubby.” There was laughter in Harcourt’s voice. Beginning to be friendly, was he? A trifle late in the day, Janice resented indignantly.
“Thank you, I don’t eat nuts.”
Grant paused in the act of setting down a saucer full of meats. “Says you! Who gobbled all that walnut fudge Miss Mary made for me? All right. We’ll keep these for them as likes ’em, eh, Chief? Anything new in crime circles, Miss Martha?”
Martha Samp frowned at the date-line of the sheet she held. “This paper’s four weeks old, so it’s not very new, but here’s something about a man who shot his wife ’cause she looked at his hand while he was playin’ Contract. Claimed that he just naturally got sick of her tellin’ him how to play.”
“I’ve never shot a woman,” observed Grant reflectively, “but I think I might under those circumstances.”
“There are some men who’d be better for a little shooting,” attested Chester gloomily.
Martha Samp reproved affectionately: “You boys make a joke of everything, but it’s no joke to be married to a naggin’ wife. I’ve seen it work out.”
“How’s a man going to know he’s picked a nagger? Girls are all sweetness and light when you’re stepping out with them.”
“Our romantic Jimmy’s speaking from the depths of his young and bitter experience.” Grant dodged a nutshell before he went on. “What’s the remedy, Miss Martha?”
Martha Samp pushed back her spectacles. “Do you know what I’d do about it? I’d have a law that no two young folks should marry till the girl’d spent a month with his folks, an’ he livin’ there, an’ he’d spent a month in the bosom of her family. They’d see each other as they really were, day in an’ day out. She’d know if he came down to breakfast fit to bite, an’ he’d find out if she appeared lookin’ like she was goin’ to take the sunshine out of the day for the rest of the folks. They’d know each other’s faults. If they still wanted to marry they’d be wise to just what they’d have to put up with.”
“I’ll bet there’d be a slump in the marriage market after that acid test.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Young people are great for takin’ chances, Mr. Jimmy.”
Harcourt laid down his hammer and rose. He patted Miss Martha’s angular shoulder.
“When I’m President I’ll have you in my Cabinet as minister of matrimony.” He crossed to the desk, gently lifted Janice’s chin.
“How’s the scratch, dear?”
The color flamed to the girl’s hair. Her heart seemed to stop. What did he mean by speaking to her in that possessive voice, touching her with fingers that sent a tingling warmth from feet to head. The room was so still she could hear furtive rustling in the moss chinking. Were they all as paralyzed with surprise as she? Chester, face white, took an impetuous step toward her.
Grant caught his arm, laughed, an embarrassed, shaky laugh. “Come on, Jimmy. We’re de trop. Nightie-night, Miss Martha, Miss Mary.”
The door closed. With an inarticulate word or two about lights in the Waffle Shop, the Samp sisters hurriedly departed. Janice roused from her stupefaction. Hands gripping the back of the chair behind her, she faced Harcourt’s indomitable eyes.
“What did you mean, speaking to me like that, before—before everyone. I felt as though I’d been tagged or—or posted ‘No Trespassing.’ ”
She stopped for breath.
“Glad I got the idea across. Good night, Jan. We start at sun-up, remember.”
Speechless with amazement, she stared at the door he had closed behind him.
VIII
A faint pink glow was brightening the east as Janice stepped from her cabin attired in a one-piece flying suit of weatherproof gabardine over her blue wool sports suit. The close cap fastened tight about her neck. There were deep pockets above the knees of the trousers, which tightened into ankle cuffs. It had been considered as necessary a part of her trousseau as riding-clothes. New York and its environs had gone aviation mad long before she left. Flips and zooms, solos and licenses, tri-motored ships, single-motored wasps, amphibians, great and small, had been the absorbing subjects of conversation among her friends. New York! It seemed worlds away as she looked down upon the quiet water, broken frequently by a flash of silver as a fish leaped high in air only to fall back with a splash and sparkle of spray. The air was chilly, that curious chill which comes from the proximity of snow and ice. A light breeze stirred gigantic fern fronds, a crater-top on the horizon shone pure gold.
What an atom she was in the vastness of this northern world! A world wonderful beyond human imagining. She felt its beauty like a tangible thing, drew a long breath of sheer delight. There were no dark places in her soul this morning. Gone was the sense of monotony. The possibility of adventure waiting round the corner thrilled her, not a doubt lurked in her consciousness. Something might happen on this expedition, something big, the atmosphere tingled with possibilities. She had been wise to follow her hunch. Transplanting had broken up the old design of her life. It had developed a determination to make an art of living, to conquer her fear complex, to meet problems and disappointments with gay courage. It had set her mind pulsing with new ideas, new ambitions, new plans. Suppose she had lacked the nerve to hang on till she had secured the position of secretary to the outfit? Devastating thought.
